Caitlin Cruz is a journalist in Texas.

News21 Post-9/11 Veterans Project

In the summer of 2013, I was a reporting fellow for Carnegie-Knight News21. It's a national project for students to undertake a long-term investigation under the supervision of Pulitzer Prize winners. My cohort's topic was post-9/11 veterans. I led the small team focusing on female veterans, a group that is the mostly likely to be homeless, have children and be non-white. Our country continues to forget about veterans, particularly those who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. I come from a family of vets, including a cousin who deployed to Afghanistan, so this project was incredibly personal. I got to make my favorite kind of journalism for News21: longform writing. But I also stretched myself to photograph each of the stories.